Internal emails obtained through the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act reveal that the Association of Arkansas Counties used its own attorney-to-government listserv to mobilize all 75 county clerks against citizen ballot initiatives — and that the same attorney advising counties on how to reject paper ballot petition signatures was simultaneously on the public payroll of at least two of those counties.
The Email That Started It All
On August 7, 2024, Daniel Haney — identified in county records as both the county attorney for Independence County and a Deputy Prosecuting Attorney for Cleburne County — sent an email to the Cleburne County Clerk’s office with a legal strategy for rejecting paper ballot petition signatures.
The email, obtained from a PST archive produced under FOIA by Cleburne County Clerk Sherry Logan, was sent in response to Kim Wallace, then an Administrative Deputy Clerk at the Cleburne County Clerk’s office. Wallace had forwarded Haney a letter from the Lancaster Law Firm, along with what she described as “several more pages of petition signatures” that had just been brought into her office.
Haney’s response was a point-by-point legal argument for why those signatures should be thrown out. His target: canvassers who listed 820 Bill Dean Drive, Conway, Arkansas — the address of a Homes 2 Suites by Hilton hotel — as their home address.
“Based on the fact that this address is for a business, I would submit that 820 Bill Dean Dr, Conway, AR 72032 is a business address, and anyone claiming that address, as a canvasser, should have his/her signature pages invalidated,” Haney wrote.
He cited the 2024 Arkansas Secretary of State’s Initiatives and Referenda Handbook, page 15, which states that canvassers listing a P.O. box or business address should have their signature pages invalidated.
Haney signed the email as “Daniel Haney, Deputy Prosecuting Attorney.”
According to Cleburne County Ordinance 2023-37, obtained through the same FOIA request, Haney’s position as county attorney is listed as “Contract Labor” at $15,000 per year. That makes Haney a publicly funded legal officer of Cleburne County — advising that county on how to block its own citizens from exercising their petition rights.
After the Lawsuits: AAC Lawyer Tells All 75 Clerks to Call Their Legislators
By April 2025, the strategy of invalidating canvasser signatures had generated nine separate lawsuits across Arkansas. The legal challenges, brought by citizen petitioners whose signature pages had been thrown out, represented the legal blowback from a coordinated rejection campaign that played out across multiple counties.
The AAC’s response was not to examine why nine lawsuits had been filed. It was to pass a bill.
On April 10, 2025, Lindsey Bailey French — Legal Counsel for the Association of Arkansas Counties — sent an email to every county clerk in Arkansas through the statewide clerk listserv at [email protected]:
“County clerks, your local petition cleanup bill is on the House Floor today at 1:30. Please text every one your representatives from your county and ask them to VOTE FOR SB584. Cleanup and clarification for the local petition process is needed badly as was evidenced over the 9 lawsuits filed last year — fraudulent, out-of-state canvassers were used to gather signatures in some of your counties. This General Assembly has been dedicated to increasing the integrity of the statewide ballot initiative process and they need to hear that local petitions need some reasonable guardrails as well. This bill does nothing to burden the signers of petitions. It only holds the sponsors and canvassers accountable to Arkansas law. TEXT YOUR REPRESENTATIVES TODAY AND ASK THEM TO VOTE FOR SB584 and get local petition integrity across the finish line.”
— Lindsey French, Legal Counsel, Association of Arkansas Counties
The email was sent through the official county clerks’ listserv — a government communications channel — and asked public officials to use their personal cell phones to lobby the legislature on behalf of a specific bill, in real time, during an active floor vote.
The bill in question, SB584, was described by its supporters as “cleanup” legislation for the local petition process. Critics argued it was designed to make it easier for county officials to reject citizen petitions and harder for petitioners to challenge those rejections in court.
The Man at the Center: Mark Whitmore
The connection between Haney’s advice to individual counties and the AAC’s statewide legislative campaign runs through a single name: Mark J. Whitmore.
Whitmore serves as Chief Legal Counsel for the Association of Arkansas Counties. His name appeared in previous reporting by IndependenceWatch.com when a recording of a Sharp County Election Commission meeting revealed that officials consulted both “Larry Kazee” and “Mark Whitmore” of the AAC before rejecting that county’s paper ballot petition — the same week that Independence County’s petition was rejected using identical reasoning.
Whitmore regularly communicates with all county officials across Arkansas through the same clerk listserv that French used for the SB584 lobbying campaign. His role as AAC Chief Counsel gives him direct access to county attorneys, judges, and clerks statewide — and his organization provides the legal resources those officials rely on to defend their decisions in court.
The pattern that emerges across the FOIA records: a citizen group files paper ballot petitions in a county. A county attorney on the AAC’s network — in multiple cases, Daniel Haney himself — provides the legal argument for rejection. The petition dies. A lawsuit follows. The AAC responds by lobbying the legislature to close the legal avenue the petitioners used. The cycle repeats.
What the Records Show
The records obtained through FOIA requests to Cleburne County establish the following:
- Daniel Haney was paid $15,000 per year by Cleburne County as county attorney, listed as Contract Labor under Ordinance 2023-37.
- Haney simultaneously held the role of county attorney for Independence County, where his retainer agreement has been separately requested through FOIA and is currently outstanding.
- On August 7, 2024, Haney advised Cleburne County Clerk’s office staff on how to invalidate paper ballot petition signatures, using an argument based on the canvasser’s listed address being a hotel.
- AAC Legal Counsel Lindsey Bailey French used the official statewide county clerk listserv on April 10, 2025, to ask all 75 county clerks to personally lobby their legislators for SB584 during an active House floor session.
- French’s email explicitly referenced “9 lawsuits” filed by petitioners whose signatures had been invalidated — acknowledging the coordinated rejection campaign had generated significant legal challenges.
IndependenceWatch.com has filed FOIA requests for Haney’s billing records and retainer agreement with Independence County. County Judge Robert Jeffery has committed to producing those records. That production has not yet occurred.
Additional FOIA requests remain pending with Saline County for records related to Kolton Jones — another county attorney whose name appears in AAC communications about paper ballot petition procedures.
A Public Organization Lobbying Against the Public
The Association of Arkansas Counties is a government-funded organization whose stated mission is to serve Arkansas county governments. Its legal staff — including Whitmore and French — are paid through member dues drawn from county budgets, which are funded by taxpayers.
When French sent the April 10, 2025 email asking county clerks to lobby against citizen petitions, she was using a government-funded platform, staffed by government-funded lawyers, to mobilize government officials against citizens exercising a constitutional right.
The Arkansas Constitution, Article 5, Section 1, preserves the right of citizens to propose laws through the initiative and petition process. That right exists as a check on the legislature — a power the framers reserved specifically for the people, not for counties or county attorneys.
The FOIA records suggest that the AAC, acting through its legal staff and its network of county attorneys, worked systematically to obstruct that right — and when courts began to push back, used public resources to lobby the legislature for a law that would make future obstruction harder to challenge.
IndependenceWatch.com is an independent investigative reporting project focused on government accountability in Independence County and across Arkansas. FOIA requests referenced in this article are on file and available for review. Documents cited are available upon request.